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On November 1, 1911, Italian aviator Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four bombs on two Turkish-held bases in Libya, carrying out the world's first air strike as part of the Italo-Turkish War.[2] The use of air strikes was extended in World War I. For example, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, the British dropped bombs on German rail communications. However, it was not until World War II that the Oxford English Dictionary first records usage of the term "air strike,"[3] which remained two separate words for some time thereafter. The Second World War also saw the first development of precision-guided munitions, which were fielded successfully by the Germans, and contributed to the modern sense of air "strike," a precision targeted attack as opposed to a strafing run or area bombing. The importance of precision targeting cannot be overstated: by some statistics, over a hundred raids were necessary to destroy a point target in World War 2; by the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. Air Force was able to release to media precise footage of television- or radar-guided bombs directly hitting the target without significant collateral damage (using, for example, the LANTIRN pod). Paul Fussell noted in his seminal work The Great War and Modern Memory the popular 20th century tendency to assume an errant bomb hitting a church, for example, was completely deliberate and reflective of the inherent evil of the enemy; over time, expectations for reduced collateral damage have increased to the point that developed countries engaging in war against less technologically advanced countries approach near-zero in terms of such damage and to a large degree, they have done so.

During the Vietnam War, airstrikes and their doctrine were adjusted to fit the jets, like the F-100 Super Sabre, F-105 Thunderchief, A-4 Skyhawk, and F-4 Phantom, which were entering the U.S.A.F and U.S.N inventory. These aircraft could fly faster, carry more ordinance, and defend themselves better than the F-4U Corsair and P-51 Mustang fighters that fought during the Korean War, albeit at the cost of the R&D of the aircraft itself, the weapons, and, most important to the man on the ground, fuel and loiter time, though this situation was slightly alleviated with the introduction of aircraft like the A-37 Dragonfly, A-7 Corsair II, and AC-130 gunships.

Today, airstrike terminology has extended to the concept of the strike aircraft, what earlier generations of military aviators referred to as light bombers or attack aircraft. With the near-complete air supremacy enjoyed by developed nations in undeveloped regions, fighter jets can often be modified to add strike capability in a manner less practicable in earlier generations, e.g. Strike Eagle.

Airstrikes can be carried out for strategic purposes outside of general warfare. Operation Opera was a single eight-ship Israeli airstrike against the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor, criticized by world opinion but not leading to a general outbreak of war. Such an example of the preventive strike has created new questions for international law.